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City of Demons issue 2
City of Demons #2 L. December 2010) is the second issue of a five-part miniseries. As John slowly recuperates, a pair of maverick doctors start slipping samples of his demon-tainted blood into other patients, with deadly results. Plot summary The issue opens with Doctors Yorke and Young, the two men who discovered John's demon-tainted blood at the end of the last issue, discussing their findings. They have been injecting the blood into animal test subjects, which either attack other animals rabidly or gnaw off their own limbs in an attempt to cut off the infection. Instead, they've decided to start infecting human subjects... Meanwhile, Constantine's bed-bound condition is driving him out of his mind. Luckily for him he has visitors: the boy he hypnotised in the previous issue and his mother. She introduces herself as Martha Gladstone and says that she and her son, Jeremiah, are looking for forgivness for trying to hurt him previously. She says that she knows they boys tried to mug him and that afterwards they argued - resulting in Jeremiah getting his face cut up and Carlos winding up dead. Realising that the truth - he hypnotised them into holding each other at knifepoint - could land him in hot water, John says that Carlos was the only one trying to rob him and that Jeremiah tried to intervene. Martha asks for forgivness again and John, wanting them out of there, absolves her. Afterwards, nurse Maria is walking him down the corridor when one of Yorke and Young's test subjects, Gavin, walks past. Constantine collapses with a pounding headache as they pass. thumb|left|Gavin's not happy Two days later, an uncharactaristically grumpy Gavin - now with two units of John's blood in his veins after an appendectomy - accompanies his girlfriend to her snooty parents' house for dinner. He says that he'd rather stick red hot pins in his eyes but enters anyway. After a couple of hours of being bored senseless, he makes his way to the kitchen where he exercises his options; his girlfriend finds him with his eyes punctured and blood pouring down his face. One week later, Constantine finally makes an escape attempt, but as he's about to flee down the stairs on crutches he's struck by another pounding headache and sways dangerously forwards. Before he can fall, though, Jeremiah catches him. Another headache hits Constantine and, unseen by both of them, Jeremiah's temples pulse blue with demon blood. Jeremiah seems unaffected, though, and helps John back inside - just as Nicole, another demon blood receiver, is wheeled past. thumb|Modern art goes nasty... Three weeks later and her ruptured spleen repaired, Nicole is mixing some plaster in her attic while she casually chats to the man next to her. Unfortunately, the man in question has had limbs hacked off and an eye gouged out by Nicole. Discussing her art project with the man, puts the bucket of plaster over his head and decapitates him with razor wire, while the heads of her previous victims stare down from the wall above her. Once again, her temples glow blue with demon blood... thumb|left|Ouch. Again. Six weeks later, Constantine's back on his feet and discharged from hospital by doctors Yorke and Young. At Oxford Circus he walks past a homeless girl and stops to give her enough money to call her parents and go home. But the veins in her temples pulse with demon blood as she starts calling John 'daddy' and clinging to his leg. His head pounding and completely unaware of what's going on, Constantine shakes her off and leaves, only for the girl to latch on to the next passer-by. But the next guy turns out to be a lot nastier than John, and kicks the girl square in the stomach before turning away. Quick as a flash and before John's astonished eyes, the girl grabs a knife from her bag, leaps on the man's back and cuts right through his throat... Continued in City of Demons issue three. Discontinuity * While Constantine's blood causes people to go insane in this storyline, Angie Spatchcock was given a transfusion in Hellblazer issue 176; the result was instantaneous physical recuperation and no psychosis at all. However, it is explained in later issues that the doctors have altered and experimented on the composition of the blood. Goofs * Nicole Ryan's hair changes from brown to blonde over the course of two pages. Notes * The cover date is 'L. December 2010' - presumably standing for 'late December'. * The sub-title 'Another Girl, Another Planet' is taken from the song of the same name by new wave group The Only Ones. * On his DeviantArt page, artist Sean Murphy explained that after his work on Hellblazer issue 245-246 was met with criticism by some Hellblazer fans, he felt a little vindictive towards Constantine. As a form of subtle rebellion, he decided to put the logo of a US punk band - The Misfits - rather than a UK one on John's T-shirt. The Misfits logo also appears in Epiphany Greaves' bedroom in Hellblazer issue 260. Category:Si Spencer stories